This Side of Lost

Okay, so I basically haven't posted in two months -- I know. And we got back from our Weddings & Conferences Tour '07 a week and a half ago and there's tons of things to tell you about that -- I know. But that's not what's on my mind right now. So let's talk about Tina Dico.

First of all, she's f'ing gorgeous. But beyond that. I picked up her newest CD release In the Red off the shelf at Borders just because the cover caught my eye. It turns out I liked the music too. I ended up buying it a couple months later before we went on our trip.

I'm kind of addicted now. She's Danish and In the Red hit No. 1 on the Danish charts over megabands like Coldplay and U2. She's one of those "didn't like how the big record company was going to market her and went her own way to success outside the biz" stories and it's easy to understand how -- she's quite a talent. Her myspace page says she sounds like Joan Armatrading and Joni Mitchell, but I don't know them enough to say whether that's true or not. I'm comparing her to Norah Jones or Dido, except darker, more vocally striking -- and better. What can I say? I've got a crush. Take a listen. She's got a couple videos on Youtube as well.

Anyway. I'll try and get some more newsy posts out here in rapid succession. Stay tuned.

RSS is a good thing, make no mistake. But when one is subscribed to over 60 feeds, they tend to add up quickly. And I pretty much spend all day at work on the computer anyway, so going home and wading through all that isn't my idea of fun, if I don't want a headache. Add to that a two week vacation, and you can understand how it's been a while since the old Google Reader was at zero new items. Now that it is, I suddenly have the motivation to post. Strange.

Your True Internet Weirdness™ for the day: a beatboxing flute player. Who has zero talent. Really. No, not really.

The rest of this post will be broken up into categories of things done/experienced before our trip. That will come later.

Visitors
We've had a short spurt of visitors to our fair region recently:

• Bob and Mike. Samantha's friend Bob has a friend Mike who wanted to run the marathon in San Diego, so Bob came along, so we went to San Diego to see them. In addition to the tourist stuff below, we had a good time finding restaurants and navigating the questionable public transit.
• Jon, a friend of ours from Bloomington was here for a conference and graced us with his presence for much of the day Sunday.
• Ian, a friend of Samantha's from college was also in town for a relative's graduation and we spend some time with him before he continued his Californian tour. The line of the day: "Donovan's a mortician??"

Food

• The Valley Greek Festival was over Memorial Day weekend. While there were things besides food involved (tour of the church, dancing, merchandise), the food was the high point. We had moussaka, spanikopita, dolmathes, and a variety of pastries that were all just fantastic. It was pricey but well worth it. So, so good.
• Sprinkles. We patronized this Beverly Hills institution with Jon. Despite the 20 minute wait, we had a good time. I had the red velvet and the black-and-white. The former was excellent, the latter not so much. I'll try something different next time.
• Chao Krung, Thai restaurant. Another Jon excursion -- and Lindsay came along too. Excellent pad thai. Yes, I had pad thai at a Thai restaurant. I always have pad thai at Thai restaurants. Remind me to tell you my barometer theory of ethnic restaurants.

Touristy Stuff

• San Diego Maritime Museum. We went with Bob and Mike in San Diego (obviously). This was how we spent much of our afternoon, and it was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. We crawled around in a Soviet submarine, for instance. Khorosho!
• The Getty Center is an art museum set high in the Santa Monica mountains above west LA. It's a must-see in Los Angeles, and we hadn't been there yet, so we took advantage of a visiting tourist (Jon) to make the trek up the Santa Monica mountains (err, I mean, jump in the nifty monorail and glide up the hill). It's a beautiful place. We saw the Painted Menagerie exhibit, the Medieval Beasts illuminated manuscripts exhibit, among other things. Very cool.

Choir Stuff

• Samantha and I ended our brief, tumultuous relationship with the Angeles Chorale on June 9th, with our last concert. Weird stuff. The Brahms was okay. We're mostly just glad not to be there anymore. We'll be keeping in touch with certain cool folks though.
• I've gotten my list of confirmed gigs with the Master Chorale next season. Drop me a line if you want more details.
• I'm still looking for a regularly rehearsing choir for next season. Not much luck yet. I've heard good things about the Occidental Chorale, but it looks like another massive choir with lots of orchestra rep. I was hoping for a small group with more a cappella literature, but that may not be in the cards. Oh, the life of a choral snob...

That's all the news before our trip. Back with more on that next week!

Most of the time, when we described this trip to people (many, many people we saw along the way), their responses ranged from impressed to incredulous to just plain confused. Like, "Why in the world did you decide to do it this way?" The simplest answer to that is we kind of had to. I had two good friends getting married two weeks apart. In the middle were two librarian conferences -- one Samantha was planning on attending (indeed, even got a scholarship to go to) and one of which we both were. What were we supposed to do? Fly back and forth three times?

So this is what we ended up with, approximately. The route is outlined in blue and the placemarks are all the spots where we slept. (I'm trying out Google Maps new My Maps feature. Did it work?) And you know what? It was a good time.

I'll spare you the blow-by-blow and give you the run down in two of my own trademark inimitable ways: by bullet point highlights and numerical overview!

• Amy's wedding. A little church in her lovely hometown in New Hampshire was the location. The ceremony was very musical and very Amy. We saw some old friends and had a good time hanging out with the younger crowd.
• Seeing Alison and Ramy in Boston while getting detoured on the T and crashing a potluck birthday party.
• A quiet evening and delicious dinner hosted by Tone.
• An awesomely efficient and thorough tour of Manhattan by my high school friend Erik.
• Seeing the Twins lose to the Mets at Shea Stadium (yes, still a highlight in spite of the loss).
• A mostly relaxing three days in Baltimore sightseeing while Samantha attended the RBMS pre-conference. I bummed around her mom's house reading and also spent a day wandering around Mount Vernon, seeing the Peabody Library, the Basilica of the Assumption, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, central branch, the Walters Art Museum, and (last but not least) a tour of Camden Yards.
• An educational and socially entertaining three days in Washington, DC at the ALA conference. Samantha continued her heavy schmoozing at several RBMS meetings, I attended a few sessions, and we caught up with friends both old and new over good food and drinks -- many of which were on the dime of vendors or alma maters.
• A day and a half in Bloomington, IN, visiting friends (and favorite eating establishments).
• Seeing relatives in Indianapolis and Chicago.
• Jen's wedding. This one was outside, at a resort near a lake in rural Wisconsin. Old friends and new were once again in attendance and the reception was a grand time.
• Seeing my parents briefly before catching an early flight back.

And! The second edition of The Trip Index (here's the first, in case you forgot):
17: Non-library friends seen (Gillian, Amy, Becky, Ramy, Tone, Erik, Leili, Corrine, Sam, Robert, David, Jon, Mari, Tony, Aaron, Hilary, Jen)
15: States visited
12: trips taken on public transit in Boston, NYC, Washington and Baltimore
9: nights staying with friends/family (thank you, all of you!)
8: family members seen (Mom, Dad, Cyndi, Rich and Jim, John and Marti, Alison)
7: library-related friends seen (Amy, Pete, Sarah, Hannah, Isabelle, Jaclyn, Susanna)
7: nights in hotels
5: nights in hotels paid for by work or gift certificates
4: airports (LAX, BOS, MSP, DFW)
2: conferences totally attended
2: friends totally got married
2: cars rented
2: hot dogs at Shea Stadium
1: road warrior wife who, amazingly, also thought this trip was a good time
0: performances of Um Ya Ya
0: visits to Waffle House??

Whew. Life after trip coming up next!